POVERTY LEVEL ASSESSMENT AND MONITORING USING GIS TECHNIQUES

Poverty reduction plans and strategies can only be put in place if the areas vulnerable to particular type of poverty are known and properly demarcated. The existing basic services poverty information are stored in tabular form or spreadsheets such that they tend to lack spatial dimension and hence it is difficult to locate spatially the areas that are most vulnerable to poverty in terms of primary education and health services. To reduce poverty in terms of basic service we need to identify and demarcate areas that are highly vulnerable to poverty. Knowing these areas will therefore facilitate in formulating sound basic services poverty reduction plans, as the plans will then be confined to a particular area that has an identified type of poverty. This is simply because not all areas may face the same type and level of poverty in terms of basic service and under the same conditions. Different areas may experience dissimilar types of poverty and the underlying causes may also differ and hence the strategies to reduce that kind of poverty should also be different.